


One Guest Does Not Trouble Two Hosts

by oneiriad



Category: Xi You Ji | Journey to the West - Wu Cheng'en, 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:53:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24591850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneiriad/pseuds/oneiriad
Summary: The Cloud Recesses has an unusual visitor and Lan Wangji is given a chance to change one moment in the past.
Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn/Sun Wukong
Comments: 12
Kudos: 83





	One Guest Does Not Trouble Two Hosts

“But why you?”

They look down at the book placed between them on the table. It doesn’t look particularly remarkable. Just another book, to look at it.

Lan Wangji hesitates before answering.

“Perhaps he just brought it as a suitable host gift?” he eventually offers. Even as he utters the words, they sound absurd. Even for one such as their guest, this book - it is far too precious for that.

“Well, he did seem to appreciate the banquet you Lans put together for him. Even if you did empty out our entire stash of Emperor’s Smile just for him.”

Wei Ying pouts and entirely ignores Lan Wangji’s pointed glance at the last jar of wine sitting on the table next to the book.

“By rights, that should have earned _me_ a present. Perhaps he was entertained by watching you get all sweaty trying to lift that staff of his?”

Lan Wangji glares at his husband. There’s no need for Wei Ying to make it sound - like that.

“It would have been rude to turn down the invitation to try. And unwise.”

“Right, of course. Only the best for our guest. The best food, the best entertainment, the nicest bed in the Cloud Recesses…”

“Ridiculous,” he grumbles, trying to ignore the tips of his ears turning pink. Of course it is ridiculous, the things that Wei Ying are implying - their guest isn’t even human!

Of course, that’s really all it takes to have Wei Ying on the floor, laughter peeling like bells. Which, come to think of it, reminds him of earlier that evening, when his Uncle had made some comment about Wei Ying, about demons, and how this had prompted their guest to turn that burning gaze on his husband, making Lan Wangji reach for his sword even knowing that he’d not be able to make a difference if - but then their guest had been the one on the floor, laughing and declaring that he’d seen more evil in a bunny than in this so-called Yiling Patriarch.

Which had been an unspeakable relief.

“Oh, Lan Zhan, you know I don’t mean anything by it. Perhaps he just knows you have the finest calligraphy in all of Gusu? Or he feels a kinship to the Second Jade of the Lan, one rock to another? At the end of the day, _why_ doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“No.”

The why can remain a mystery, truly. Some things - best not to waste too much time pondering them. It will simply earn him a headache.

The why is not important. The what - that’s important.

“So - have you thought about what you’d like to rewrite?” Wei Ying asks, picking up a brush and playing with the soft goat hair.

He has. This offer - “One page,” their guest had said. “One page can be removed and replaced, before I have to take it back. Just make sure nobody can tell the difference.”

He has given it so very much thought.

There are the obvious moments, of course. His mother’s death. The burning of the Cloud Recesses.

Wei Ying’s death.

There are other, less obvious moments. Words that he would have spoken, if he had only known. Lives to save - or perhaps to end.

He finds himself leafing through the book, searching for that obvious point - and yet, there is always something. He wants so very, very badly to spare his husband the horrors of the Burial Mounds, of what he became there - but the horror is this: that the Sunshot Campaign would most likely have been lost without the Yiling Patriarch. Where would they have ended then?

Dead or worse, under the rule of the Wen.

He moves the pages forward, imagines if he had only said, if he had only realized - but each of those wishes would require far more than a single page.

He imagines making it so Wen Qing never found Wei Ying, and immediately hates himself for it. To even contemplate leaving his son and his son's beloved uncle to their deaths in the Jin prison camps.

It does not bear thinking of.

He imagines going there with Wei Ying, but the sad thing is - he doubts he would have made enough of a difference. He imagines exposing Jin Guangyao, but if he is honest with himself, the powers arraigned against his love back then are not so easily summed up in a single, scheming mind. All the sects had been scared of this new demonic cultivation.

It is a cruel gift their guest has given him.

“Lan Zhan,” his husband calls. “It’s nine. You should come to bed. I am lonely.”

So he does.

After all, every day is every day.

Afterwards, when his husband is snoring contentedly, he rises and returns to the book, to the maddening promises it whispers. He turns the pages, one by one, searching for the elusive right moment, and yet it escapes him. Eventually, he tries to turn a page and it refuses, sticking to what follows and dragging the rest of the book shut.

He goes back over the parts he can read twice more that night.

Eventually, he makes his decision.

There is a knock in the early morning hours, and their guest is standing outside the jingshi, staff in hand, the feathers on his headband swaying lightly in the morning breeze. He looks like a perfectly ordinary mortal wanderer like this, not even a cultivator, let alone more.

Lan Wangji places the book in his outstretched hand, and watches their guest raise his eyebrows.

“No regrets, then?”

“Many. More than I can count, but - yesterday is the price we must pay for today.”

“Very sage-ish of you,” he says, shaking his head sadly as he puts the book into a pouch - but his lips are parted in a grin that reminds Lan Wangji of Wei Ying.

Well, the unusually pointed canines aside.

“Ah, but this is embarrassing,” he exclaims, then scratches behind his ear. “I can’t just leave without thanking you properly for your hospitality, now can I? That’d be - very rude of me.”

“Extremely rude.” Wei Ying’s voice is sleepy. “I’m sure there’s a rule on the Wall of Discipline about being nice to your hosts.”

“Alas, I was never one for reading,” their guest says, taking a step forward and pulling the door closed behind him. “But I am sure, my new friends, that if we try, between us, we can think of something appropriate?”

It is utterly inappropriate. Uncle would be scandalized.

Lan Wangji - is not.

Afterwards, he finds himself drifting towards sleep, nestled between the pair of them. His sleepless night is catching up with him.

“Why?” Wei Ying’s voice is low, his fingers carding idly through Lan Wangji’s hair.

“Perhaps he reminds me of an old friend.”

*******

Lan Wangji rises many hours after five.

It is utterly scandalous, really.

Wei Ying is sitting by the desk, a couple of unsatisfactory talismans crumbled around him. Of their guest there is no sign.

“He left us breakfast,” Wei Ying says, pointing at a bowl of peaches that wasn’t in the jingshi yesterday.

They share one between them. It is extraordinarily sweet.


End file.
